


Interrogator

by TearoomSaloon



Series: Girl in the Mask, Boy in the Sand [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst, Dark Rey, F/M, Mental Anguish, Role Reversal, Scavenger!Ben - Freeform, it's plain sad if anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 00:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6588793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TearoomSaloon/pseuds/TearoomSaloon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We two are alike, you and I."</p><p>It all starts when the mask comes off. None of the notes are sweet and none of this is good. He hits the ground running with a broken ankle. She may profess to not believing in unnecessary violence, but after what he's done, he's certain she'll break the other foot without so much as a second glance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interrogator

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm one of two other people who genuinely likes flipping their roles around. Here's to you other two guys, our tiny fanclub meets on Wednesdays.

He awakens in in a room with his back straight as a ramrod, wrists and ankles bound uncomfortably with leather straps. The sides of the room are dark, but he is bathed in light, the beeping and hissing of valves and latches far off in some other space, other place, in a hallway back behind closed doors. His head aches, his chest aches, and he's certain not all of his pains are coming from this torturous contraption to which he is strapped.

Ah, there's his captor. Bent down on his haunches, helmeted head cast upwards to survey him. The silver saber-teeth of the visor catch heavy lights, reflecting almost white in the darkness.

"Where am I?" Ben's throat is hoarse, dry.

"You're my guest," the affected voice replies in a cool, even tone. Ren rises from his position and stalks closer. "Are you really just a scavenger?" It's accusatory, mixed with a puzzling hint of wonder.

Ben stays silent, his fury great enough that he bares his teeth through his fear.

"Such anger in you, such black-seated hatred. From where do your fears stem?"

He snaps, growling when Ren stops his approach. "It's hard not to hold some fear while you're being stalked by a creature in a mask."

"I can alleviate one part, but not the other." He reaches up, unclicking the mechanisms that keep the twisted beastlike helmet in place. The tusked maw clears his head and—

It's a girl.

A girl, no older than twenty-five.

Her dark chestnut hair is drawn into knots on top of her head, braids running across her scalp to keep it all tight under the mask. Her eyes are dark and brimmed with a forlornness that is almost unfathomable. Aside from those grim eyes, she is completely unremarkable in appearance, not a trace of maliciousness or cruel scarring on her visage. If she wanted, she could disappear like smoke in a crowd, and perhaps that was the most haunting of all.

"I'm sorry to have to do this, Scavenger," she says, placing the helmet on a table he could only imagine usually held sharp instruments. "But I do need that map, and I cannot let you leave without it."

"What have you done with the rest of them?"

He needs to rein in the confidence, before she sees through him like glass.

"The ruffians parading around under the name of _justice_ , the liars, thieves, and murders you wish to call friends?" She looks upon him with a darkness before shrugging, her gesture smooth and inoffensive. "I haven't a clue. I see no reason for violence for violence's sake."

He wants to argue a few very harsh words with her, about how she's been nothing but vicious, but the blade of his words goes dull. She did not personally injure a soul on that battlefield. It doesn't make her good, but it does mean she might be telling him the truth.

"So I want to do this as easily as possible. I don't want to hurt you."

"But you will."

She lets out a terse breath. "If you fight, you'll injure yourself. Don't fight it, Scavenger." She approaches, then, hovering just above him. Her eyes—her eyes are such dark pools of distress, of anger. Not at him, but at the universe. "Don't be afraid, dear boy." Her voice is smooth and calm as a tendril of something almost flowing ripples against his mind. "The Force," she says by way of explanation, "I feel it too."

Memories start flying through his mind's eyes, heavy and sickening. There are so many—it's overwhelming him fast—and they call up all the emotions he felt during their occurrences, all the ones he associated with them later.

"I'm sorry." Her voice floats through. "Don't latch on, let them pass. I have to filter through them for what I need."

Oh, but he disobeys.

"I see an island."

And he's on that island. It's a deep night, the water crashing rhythmically against the shore. It's cooler here, the air salted and fully of ocean spray. There's green, too, plants and flowers growing tall under the starry sky.

"It's what you dream of to comfort yourself at night."

She's not wrong, but the words sting. The sand is unpleasant under his toes.

"You're so lonely it aches in your chest." She chuckles by his ear, but he can't see her. "Oh, we're all lonely, boy. There's no cruelty like the night."

There's a flash and comfort washes over him.

"Han Solo."

Han, on the Falcon, with his great big smile. He'd given Ben the jacket now upon his back, the worn leather hide and Corellian bloodstripes. _You earned them, kid_ , Han had said.

"A father you never had." She sounds bitter, anguished. "He'd have disappointed you."

A flash of the desert. His parents, abandoning him on Jakku. The spaceship left the atmosphere and never returned. They left their boy to rot in the hot sand, his carcass for the buzzards.

His name, his name is spoken into the hot air. She hears it, he knows from the sharp breath she takes.

"I understand you. We two are alike, you and I." Her tone is too soft. He can't see her, cannot see the expression she wears, sees nothing but hot dunes and blistering curls of heat.

"We're _nothing_ alike," he hisses. He pushes against her, pushes hard against the tendril invading his memories, calling up his old wounds. He roars and claws until he's somewhere he doesn't recognize.

A temple in a jungle set ablaze, the screams of victims heard echoing through the landscape. A girl, no older than fifteen, watches the bonfire with shaking legs. Her lightsaber ignites the tears on her cheeks, glistening blue and sorrowful. She's cradling a child to her chest, a young one who won't make it. The only thing she can feel is sickening guilt as it crawls its way up her throat.

The image smears away and the same girl is older now and she carries a heavy weight upon her shoulders. She wears nothing but black, has cast off her light-colored robes for a dark tabard, a thick cloak, and heavy black and silver armor that curls like spikes from her shoulders. She needs to be venomous, fearsome. Someone calls her a dog—spits it, spits _bitch_ —and a dog she becomes, her visor mimicking the snarling maw of a canine monster with its ears drawn back. Her chest is always on fire with self-hatred and guilt, but she channels them well, turning into the demons she so feared.

A few more years pass and the girl is on her knees before a totem of some kind. She's scared—more scared than she's been in years—and she needs guidance from someone who will never answer her pleas. She's lost her path. She can't—she doesn't think she'll ever measure up, ever be good enough—

"You're afraid." Ben snaps from her memories, glaring up at her hard eyes. "You're afraid you'll never be _Vader_."

It injures her—clearly, with pain written down her face—and she snarls before withdrawing, leaving him without claiming her prize.

Ben is left in the silence. Her presence has long left but he can feel her anger in the back of his thoughts, feel her worry and fear and the spark of knowing another like-mind wasn't the furthest impossibility.

His stomach rolls unpleasantly. He doesn't…he _won't_ become like her.

But, oh, he has a sinking feeling she'll become more important than the galaxy had ever wished. They were intertwined now, for she was right; they were alike, but not for the reason she thinks.

* * *

 

 

Hey howdy hey have a reference sheet for Rev!Rey


End file.
